Doctor Who: The Key to Time (Tom Baker)

In trying to avoid the tedious pre-election prattle about Brexit I decided to go in for what turned out to be a major piece of escapism and ordered the boxed set of Tom Bakers Key To Time. This consists of no less than six stories over 26 stories which means it would have bee broadcast over six months. Being retired I got though it in just over a week including a few of the bonus features of which there are plenty.

This is Doctor Who as most people of my age remember it. Great acting and the need to suspend disbelief due to the low tech special effects, but it was a kids TV programme at the end of the day. I recall describing it to a media studies student ans classic British Pantomime with monsters thrown in!

I grew up having been lucky enough to see the very first episode of Doctor Who aged seven in 1963. My favourite Doctor was always Patrick Troughton with his companions Zoe (Wendy Padbury) and Jamie (Fraser Hines) but frankly they are all good and so were most of his companions over the years though Ace always irked me by referring to the Doctor as "professor". Still part of her particular charm I suppose.

This box set is actually quite inexpensive having set me back a little over £22 from Amazon and with the exception of the first story (after the introduction to the whole sequence) they are all solid Doctor Who yarns. The Ribos Operation could have been shorter in my opinion especially since it had just about the worst "monster" set I can think of.




However once you get past that the stories improve. Of course this adventure also introduces us to Romana (Mary Tamm) and Lalla Ward appears as a Princess in the final part, The Armageddon Factor as does another (not to be seen again) Time Lord. There's some classic if laughable moments in The Stones of Blood as huge stones chase the Doctor across the countryside and into space as for the giant squid Kroll, Like I said, pantomime with "monsters".

  


The new adventure of the Doctor from Christopher Ecclestone onwards are on a technical level so superior to these old ones but I think they will always have an appealing charm to those of us like Peter Pan refuse to grow up and hopefully generations to come.